SEO Werkt!

The day has come, the return of the discontinued Yahoo Site Explorer in the form of Bing Link Explorer.

Bing has announced some incredible new tools for Bing Webmaster Tools now really setting it apart from Google. The new Bing Webmaster Tools is completely revamped but the most exciting feature for me is the new Link Explorer.

Link Explorer lets you look up links for any site on the web, like Yahoo Site Explorer did but with more filters. Here is a look at the filter options:

The options include filter by site, anchor text, query, scope and source. This is pretty good news. I have yet to really test it because I am writing this while in a lounge about to fly back to New York after SMX but this step by Bing is huge.

Other changes and features include:

• New User Experience
• New: SEO Reports
• New: SEO Analyzer
• New: Fetch as Bingbot
• New: Canonical Alerts
• Updated: URL Removal Tool
• Updated: Keyword Research Tool
• Updated: URL Normalization

Bing has a nice blog post explaining all the changes and Vanessa Fox has a great write up at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google Maps, Google Local, Google Places and now Google+ Local – yep Google has yet again renamed their local results to bring in Google+, as expected.

The new experience ties in Google+ into Google Maps and business listings, plus adds Zagat reviews to the foreground.

As Google announced on their Google+ page:

Today weâre rolling out Google+ Local, a simple way to discover and share local information featuring ZAGAT scores and recommendations from people you trust in Google+.

From the new âLocalâ icon on the left-hand side of Google+, you can search for specific places or browse for ones that fit your mood. Clicking on any place will take you to a local Google+ page that includes photos, Zagatâs high-quality scores and summaries, reviews from people in your circles and other information like address and opening hours.

Google+ Local is also integrated across the other products you already use every day, including Search, Maps and mobile, so you can get the same great local information wherever you go.

Here are some screen shots showing the level of integration with Google+, circles, and Zagat reviews (note click on any image to enlarge):

If you have a Google Places result, continue to manage that place result in Google Places at Google Places. Although it seems like that will change over time and more and more features will be tied to the Google+ experience.

Greg Sterling as his review on Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at Google+ Page.

Google announced they have added a new feature to Google Analytics to show you who is linking to a specific page.

To see it, go to Google Analytics, under Traffic Sources > Social > Pages and then click on a specific page. Then click on the “Activity Stream” option at the top middle portion. Google Analytics will then give you this report:

Google said it best when it said:

Have you ever wondered which other pages on the web link to your own? Wouldnât it be nice to know which sites are talking about your content, and in which context? Well, a problem no more: now you can see all the backlink URLâs, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports.

If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.

If only the reports were more focused around how SEOs and link builders like to see it. Maybe down the road?

Daniel digs a lot deeper into this new report at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Google+ is fairly unusual and it just got a bit more unusual today. If you search Google, you might see Google suggesting that you thank your friends for +1ing the search result in Google+.

For example, I searched for [google] on Google and Google said I should the following people for +1ing the page on Google+. Here, Robert Scoble and Danny Sullivan +1ed Google.com and Google suggested I should thank them.

Then the Google+ share box will come on, specifically sending a message to Danny and Robert (limited share) thanking them for +1ing it on Google+.

This is what the share looks like in my Google+ Stream:

This was first spotted by Bas on State of Search and @charliesaidthat and Finn on Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at Twitter & Google+.

Google announced a new ad tracking metric for tracking calls or click to calls triggered from mobile landing pages. The new metric is fully integrated into your AdWords campaign and gives you just a bit more useful information for your advertiser efforts.

Google said:

You’ll now be able to attribute clicks on your phone number or ‘call’ button back to the AdWords campaign, ad group, ad or keyword that brought a customer in. As this is a new tracking metric, there won’t be new charges or changes to CPCs. We hope that this new metric will give advertisers and agencies new, richer information on the value and returns from their mobile advertising.

For technical details on how to set up call tracking, see this help document.

Greg Sterling has his analysis of this at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.